Chinese professor rejects racism charge over facial analysis research that ‘identifies criminals’
Paper saying machines could be programmed to tell if a person was a criminal was slammed by Google researchers as racist and alarming
A Chinese professor has expressed surprise after a study he co-authored that said machines could be programmed to tell if a person was a criminal was slammed by Google researchers as “scientific racism”.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University computer science Professor Wu Xiaolin said he never suggested that machines could be used in this way and that the Google researchers had resorted to “name calling” rather than having a sober discussions.
“Their charge of scientific racism was groundless,” Wu told the South China Morning Post.
In the paper, submitted last November to Cornell University Library’s arXiv site, an online repository of moderated scientific papers, Wu and his student Zhang Xi wrote that they found machines could use data to make reliable inferences about whether someone was a criminal. The study was based on an analysis of almost 2,000 Chinese government ID photos of criminals and non-criminals.
“Given the race, gender and age, the faces of law-abiding members of the public have a greater degree of resemblance compared with the faces of criminals,” the pair wrote, noting that criminals tended to have eyes that were closer together.
